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Saturday, 16 June 2012

I recently picked up two incredibly
poignant documents from a military memorabilia shop in Folkestone. We
were down in Kent for the launch of Matt Rowe's chap book style Vernacular Folk publication. Vernacular Folk is a
beautifully photographed archive of the exhibitions Matt has hosted
at his B and B space. It includes a fine essay by Sarah for a her
GHost residency at last year's triennial. Other highlights include
Matt's “Bad Omen” - comprising of a figure on a beach wrapped in
video tape made from the film The Omen - another curious
vivification of my story The Dunwich Tapes.

Back to the documents. The first is an
identity card found in the skips of St. Bernard's mental hospital as
it was being regenerated into luxury housing. The card comes from the
Second World War and is purportedly for a prostitute rounded up and
declared mentally defective in an attempt to prevent to the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases to U.S. Troops. A nice bit of paranoid
social engineering that is still being echoed in recent reports about the forthcoming Olympics; where major sports events are
spuriously associated with increases in sex trafficking, rumours that
are largely revealed to be unfounded when assessed quantitatively.

The identity card is of one Louisa
Morris (which appears to be an anglicised rendering of Louie
Morruzzi). She was registered at St. Bernard's Hospital in Southall,
Middlesex on 23rd July 1943, before being moved to Darenth
Park in Kent on 18th July 1944 and finally back to St. Bernard's in
October 1944.

'Mentally Defective' Identity card from WW2

St. Bernard's Hospital along with many
other closed down asylums has been converted into luxury housing. As
this article in The Psychiatristdetails, the marketing materials for these
housing projects make interesting and unintentionally ironic reading,

“Examples of the language employed
by property developers in sales brochures advertising old hospital
buildings included 'sanctuary' and 'seclusion' in 'grade II listed
buildings', 'tastefully converted period buildings' and 'luxury
penthouses'. There was a strong emphasis on security, with 'a secure
and private environment', '24 hour security guards', 'security gates'
and 'CCTV surveillance'. Original asylum architecture is even
imitated in modern buildings: 'the classic facades that emulate the
original architecture', and the clock tower of one former hospital
was used as a symbol to represent the whole development.

Residents at the redeveloped site of
Nethern Hospital will be greeted by 'the gentle bounce of tennis
balls on private courts' and 'the distant voices of children'. They
will, however, remain unaware of the 1976 enquiry into high levels of
suicides that found serious understaffing and unsatisfactory
conditions on the wards”.

The article also tabulates a list of
former psychiatric hospitals and their current use: I am particularly
intrigued by Bradwell Grove, Oxfordshire which is now a zoo...

The second document I acquired is an
school exercise type book for one B. Cheeseman who was attending a
'first aid' course run by with Civil Defence Corps in 1966, for the
treatment of patients following a nuclear attack. Judging by the
changes in pen, the course ran over a number of days or weeks (around
October) and took place in Kingston, Surrey. The proprietor of the military
shop thinks they were probably evening courses. It's a document of
enormous terrifying nostalgia, the instructions for constructing
makeshift ambulances as efficacious as the blueprint for an Arabian
magical carpet; the treatment for soft tissue injuries as futile as
the curative recipes of a medieval cunning man. The guides to managing the
psychological effects on patients, in particular, have all the moral
emptiness of the Ten Commandments,

It seems even B. Cheeseman loses hope
in the value of the course as, towards the end of the notes, she
doodles a Christmas Tree next to a topic heading “Germ Warfare”.
It would appear that as the festive season of 1966 draws nearer her
mind wanders from effects of nerve gas to her plans for decorating
the house.